Conventionally, there exist load distributed printing systems which distribute a printing load to a plurality of inexpensive medium-speed printing apparatuses and cause them to operate in parallel to implement high-speed printing at a low cost instead of executing mass printing by using one high-speed mass printing apparatus when it is necessary to print documents in a large quantity.
When a plurality of printing apparatuses are operated in parallel, the load concentrates at a specific printing apparatus. To solve this problem, various techniques to efficiently use a plurality of printing apparatuses have been proposed (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 06-259206).
However, the conventional print system represented by Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 06-259206 is directed to simply solve the problem of load concentration at a specific printing apparatus. There is still room for improvement from the viewpoint of efficiently operating a plurality of printing apparatuses assuming even interruption of printing in that printing apparatus. If an error occurs, output of the job that has already been transmitted to the device delays. In addition, assume that an error occurs in a printing apparatus, and another printing apparatus immediately starts “redirect on error” printing. If the system recovers from the error at an early timing, the print queue to the printing apparatus which has recovered may be blank.